Archive for December, 2011

The Philippines has been trying to bring forth initiatives that address critical shortages of health services all over the country especially in unreachable areas. The increasing number of constituents and the lag experienced in reaching them require the application of science and technology advancements, in particular telehealth. With this in mind, AyalaTBI in partnership with CebuinIT (UPCebu TBI) and ACCESS Health International brought the Innovation Forum: “Advancing Universal Health Care through Telehealth” to Cebu last December 9, 2011 at the University of the Philippines – Cebu.

Dr. Elmer Soriano, Country Director of ACCESS Health International-Philippines, started off with the Cebu province maternal health and child health situationer and opportunity space. He talked of the affected populations – childbearing numbers, maternal mortality rates, the number of childbirths, and childcare. The talk proceeded to how Filipinos, in their own right, can help solve the problem through their own resources and ingenuity. The use and application of technologies and pursuing entrepreneurship ventures in this space was highlighted with three presentations on how technologies were being used in countries like Ghana, Philippines and the US.

To cap off the event, forum guests and participants consisting of students, programmers & developers, registered nurses, businessmen/entrepreneurs, found and formed themselves into teams to talk, prioritize and zero in on ideas that would address maternal health problems. A fire pitch session followed where each team pitched its IT-enabled health program ideas to the entire group and amongst these were: web forum site for questions and expert advice using a sophisticated programmer technology application that internally sources best advices; centralized web data with flexible applications for various users from patient to doctors to clinics and hospitals; SMS system tied to alarm devise to give reminders to pregnant women and mothers; platform subscribed for by doctors & with issuance of eprescriptions via a device that recognizes security codes; and data integration service.

Six teams were formed and committed to pursuing these ideas into technology ventures targeting various client bases from patients to service providers and tapping a combination of funders like USAID, social venture funds and VC-angel networks. These teams will be pipelined into the TechBootCamps lined up by Ayala Foundation in the first quarter of 2012 – the outputs of which are firmed up business plans and models after a short incubation phase to be presented in Emerge!, Ayala Foundation-Ayala TBI’s investor presentation platform.